"the [science fiction] writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true...and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you."
- Frederik Pohl

Magnetic levitation train that travels through a tunnel; a vacuum reduces drag.

The train sat rigid as a steel bar, poised in midair above its magnetic monorail track, disgorging passengers into Dallas Station. Its fifteen cars had borne their passengers in quiet efficiency from New York to Dallas in just over half an hour, cradled in magnetic fields, traveling through vacuum at close to orbital velocity, deep underground.